I'd love to win it with how money is tight for a grad student like me in these times trying to make ends meet and have three meals a day while still keeping aside cash to pay off student debts. Why do I want an iPad? Well here I go.
Well, its a great touch-enabled device with a very fluid UI, which is no surprise coming from Apple. The apps are wonderful and varied and let you do anything you'll ever want. The increased screen real estate on the iPad when compared with other iDevices ( I have none of the newer ones really
) helps to greatly enhance the user's experience.
I play music and design circuits and this kind of device would be a boon to me. Imagine, storing all my music sheets digitally on the iPad, I could put it up right in front of my piano and have none of the trouble of music sheets cracking or yellowing with age, or fluttering with the wind. I could zoom into the part I'm playing with a finger or two.
The same goes for my circuits. I need to pull up information quickly from the net, sometimes entire circuits and zoom in and out and analyze them before I solder them on a PCB and test them (part of my engineering syllabus).
Besides all this stuff, I blog a lot and when traveling, a device like the iPad (especially with 3G) would be a massive aid for me to blog on the move. I'm a big fan on videos off the net, and I need my fill of trailers, music videos and what not hot off the web and the iPad is a great media consumption device - so it'd always be on when I'm on a train or the bus, and when you're allowed to keep them switched on on a flight too.
It wouldn't replace my notebook, but it would definitely be a worthy tool to carry around on my trips when I don't need every feature that a full-on notebook has - the mobility it offers beats having to lug around a notebook-bag and shoving that into an inevitably full luggage bin above.
I use public transport (cheaper and environment friendly too), and the iPad is great for working and reading on the move. There's this project I'm starting work on - basically trying to improve methods to generate electricity from revolving doors. I'll need to convince some building owner to have faith in my engineering idea and let me modify their revolving door to test out my project too. The iPad would be of much help in giving a professional presentation when I go out to meet such people (and hopefully in convincing them to have faith in my engineering skills lol).
Home energy management apps are even beginning to appear on the iPad. With its Arsenic-free display glass, lack of brominated flame retardants, Mercury-free LCD display, absence of PVC and Recyclable aluminum and glass enclosure - the iPad is certainly a green tool for any technologically-inclined environment buff like me. From what I've read the 25-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery can also be "down-cycled" after it has reached the end of its serviceable life; that is, elements of it can be reclaimed for applications other than a battery. And the low power draw and high battery life of nearly 10 hours dwarf the battery time of any laptop I know, and decreases the wastage of power through recharging.
If all this wasn't enough the device is also perfect for consumption of all types of media - videos, music, pictures, the news, you name it - on the go like I already said (oh and blogging would be a treat to do on this beautiful machine), and the perfect companion for any techie. I love touchscreens, even did a project on them, but ironically I've been unable to buy myself any touchscreen device from apple till now (had an old ipod touch 1st gen for a while thanks to one of my relatives handing down a device though).
So there it is... that's how much I wanna win. I don't know if it really matters that I've poured my heart into writing this, or whether it's just random selection after all, but I really really really really wanna win it.